Sunday and a busy day for the kids planned, however, it did mean my eldest and I were free all morning. She’d enjoyed our last SOTA activation and this time I wanted to try somewhere further afield, and do more than a one-pointer! Especially after my mid-week three summits trip.

We drove to the Lecht ski centre through thick fog and mist (haar) for about an hour. I’d looked at the forecast and it was meant to be partially sunny, but I was wondering if it had changed but I’d not seen it. However, with about 20 minutes to go, it suddenly cleared up and when we reached the car park it was a lovely day. This significantly helped the trip as I’m not sure my hiking partner would’ve been too pleased other wise! She immediately commented that the first path looked steep. She wasn’t wrong, it was the steepest part of the journey, although later on, on the way back, it was taxing again.

You walk around the lifts and towards another summit before descending and then ascending again to the final summit. Alone, and determined, I reckon I could do it in 45 minutes, but today it took us 1:15, with a couple of stops to sit down for a bit.

The peat bogs weren’t too bad and quite dry, but I can imagine after some rainfall they’d be very squelchy.

We made it up the last slope, watching every meter on SOTAGoat app! I emptied out the snacks and set to work getting on 2m.

Annoyingly my Kenwood D72 wouldn’t turn on. It had died on Foudland during the week and I assumed it was just flat. I’d charged it and the charging light had turned green so I assumed all was good. Well no, it wasn’t. I tried fiddling with the battery clip to get it out but couldn’t work the mechanism and soon gave up on it. I had an old TH-79 with me which did turn on (although the LCD screen doesn’t show all the segments and is difficult to read). I have tested the TH-79 at home and it transmitted, but no-one could hear me and I wasn’t sure if it was really working.

I didn’t want to spend too long faffing about as the summit is very exposed, and whilst it was a nice day, my daughter would soon get cold just sitting around. So I switched to HF. I debated between the 5.5m random wire vertical or the 40m EFHW. I wanted to go on 40m and the random wire isn’t necessarily great for 40m. However, I should’ve just gone with the vertical. As I was rushing, it meant it took me ages to get setup as things kept going wrong. Eventually I was sorted, but then the challenge of finding a free frequency. Seemed to be a contest going on, bunkers on the air and all sorts, but I did manage. Got 5 on 40m, including two locals from the SOTA Whatsapp group and that meant success! I thought I’d quickly try 20m. I heard one faint German station but when I looked up the cloud had come right in and we were sat in it. I knew it was time to go, and so we quickly packed up and started heading down. A summit in the cloud is disorientating and cold.

We headed back down, and wanted to cut off part of the path up to the first summit, and follow the contours around. We were sort of successful but did get caught up in the bog and ended up walking a bit further downhill than we should’ve. Again, the cloud level didn’t help. It was a big of a struggle to get back on to the path at the top of the ski runs but we made it, and then it was an easy downhill from there.

Quite the change when we got to the bottom, the nice view at the start of this post was replaced by white cloud!

I’m glad we arrived when we did, else it would’ve been quite miserable and the only excitement of the radio activation wouldn’t have been shared by all!

We stopped at the Spar in Bellabeg for some diet coke and a jam swiss roll, which we ate nearly half each before driving home.

There are a few more 4 pointers in the area, and hopefully I can get back to do some of those. Most have been activated less than 10 times, which suggests they’re maybe not that exciting or easy to get to. Brown Cow Hill, Geallaig, and Mona Gowan don’t seem too bad, so perhaps I should try those first.

When I got home I checked the D72. It wouldn’t turn on, but when I plugged in an external power supply it turned on and then worked fine on battery. I don’t like the reliability of this, and being caught out on a summit again. I might get a new battery pack but I also might look for another HT. Perhaps a Yeasu FT-65 etc. that has great battery life is just a simple HT.

Next summit of the day. A short drive up the A96 and off at Colpy to Hill of Foudland. I was approaching from the east so I was close to Tillymorgan but it’s not a very exciting route. I think there’s a better one from the east. I’d read on Walkinghighlands that there’s more parking in the forest, beyond the limits of the public road. Not sure if this is really allowed or not but it seemed better than parking on essentially nothing, as I was out of the way. This also saved me some walking along a boring track. After the chat with G0JSO, I was 30 minutes later than planned, and so I wasn’t sure if I was going to make it in time to get at the summit for the lunchtime 2m net.

As I was walking up I had my HT tuned into 145.550 MHz listening out for them. I managed to call into the net and said I was hiking up and I’d come back to them when I was at the top. I knew the top was quite flat, and watching SOTAGoat app I saw I was within the activation zone but still a good ~650 m from the actual summit point. At this stage I setup the telescopic pole between my legs with the slim G on the top.

On the way up, with the RH770, Bill and Paul couldn’t hear me (nor I Paul), but once I had the slim G up on the 6m mast, everyone was a very good signal. So I had three from the net and Mike was trying break in but the other guys kept chatting! Eventually it came round to me and I was answering their questions and building up to bringing Mike in when the D72 died on me! Luckily I had the 705 and got that hooked up. I rejoined and explained, plus got Mike in. If I just had the KX2 I’d been annoyed about that one!

I was sat right in front of the towers but they were quiet on 145.550. I think the 705 had some issues with them but I turned off the pre-amp and that seemed to keep it calm. I said my goodbyes and turned back down the path to my third and final summit of the day!

A quick drive across the A96 and I was parked by the old church - Kirkton of Culsalmond Old Parish Church. The path is easy, straight up the road to the turbines and then either around them bypassing the fence, or past them and then finding a spot where the barbed wire fence has come down.

Doesn’t take long and you’re in the activation zone, but I wanted to get to the trig point. Turns out there’s an old quarry here and you have to navigate it, but the trig offers lovely views all around once you do get there.

Decided to setup the yagi again and try it out, just on FM this time. The wind blew it around a little which caused signal reports to jump up and down. Managed across the water to the North to Helmsdale, about 100 km away…from the back of the yagi! I was 53 at first but when I turned it around I was 59 to him.

Just managed four in the log but that was enough, starting to feel the days activities now and it was time to be heading home. My shoes hadn’t done well on Cairn William, and were soaked back then, and still wet now.

This was the first summit I tested my new 2m yagi on. I was pleased with the summit to summit with Schiehallion around 112 km away.

I parked in a lay by just here, and walked up several mountain bike trails.

The first part was pretty muddy, but once up on the forestry track and beyond it was fine. It was a nice day if you looked south, but not so much to the north. The summit was in the clouds and somewhat damp.

The track is fairly easy to follow, just make sure to turn off the roadway on to the path, and the no entry signs are because the route is intended for mountain bikers.

Was fairly light breeze on the summit but nothing too bad, so it wasn’t hard setting up the mast with the guys. They do get tangled somewhat so I might look at alternatives.

Spoke to a couple of locals on the HT, once I was within the activation zone, and then setup the yagi for SSB. Managed 4 on sideband - a first for me - and 2M0RVZ had his first 2m sideband as well. Both of us using the ic-705. I think Chris just used the RH-770 for his antenna on the radio!

I let Bill, GM0NRT, know I was going up some other hills later that day, so he was going to keep an ear out for me.

As I was packing up I met G0JSO (although now GM0JSO as he’s moved locally) and we had a nice long chat about amateur radio. He’s not been on the air in ages and was asking lots of questions. I sent him an email when I got home, and hopefully we will hear him on the air soon. It would be good to add him to the local SOTA chat for activator and chaser…but will see what happens.

Off to the next summit!

I’ve been enjoying activating SOTA summits on 2m, and after visiting Glas Maol and seeing how far I could get with an omni directional antenna, and watching videos of people using a 2m yagi to get into England from the highlands, I wanted to build a yagi.

All my research pointed me towards DK7ZB’s designs, specifically the lightweight ones. I decided the 4 element design with a 1m boom was optimal between gain and practicalities. This has a gain of 7 dBd and a front to back ratio of 12 dB. It also has the advantage of being able to use it with 70 cms.

I went to B&Q and bought some 22mm PVC pipe, some wall clips, 4mm aluminium rods, and a 6mm aluminium tube. I already had some electrical connector blocks and RG58 cable at home. I made the boom a little longer than 1m, so I could hand hold it if I wanted to, otherwise it only needs to be 1m in length.

VK1AD’s post on building a similar yagi helped me decide how to mount everything to the boom, and I set to cutting the aluminium rods and drilling the holes in the clamp. The directors are easy, as they just slide through the clamp as a single piece. The reflector is slightly longer than 1m which the rods come in, so I used the 6mm tube as a connector between two 4mm rods. Sounds good in theory but it’s tricky to get the rods into the tube - precision hammering needed.

The driven element used the connectors from inside an electrical connector block, zip tied and then glued into one of the clamps. I used some solder wick to attach the coax to and screwed the elements in on each side.

RG58 is a bit heavy but it’s all I had so would do. Whilst this was easy to build, it does mean the only way I can transport it is by unscrewing the elements. Not the best solution but I wanted to get it built vs. debating over other ways or buying more things. A common way others do it is with a box mounted on the boom and there’s a coax connector on it, so you can remove the box with driven element in one. My one has about 3-4m of coax on which is enough from the mast mounting position to having the radio on the ground underneath.

I marked the PVC tube with sharpie for the location of each clamp, together with numbers. I also put a mark in the centre of the rod on the directors so I could centre it if it moved about in the clamp. It’s all about 1m long and I found a thin bag to carry it in. It’s not the greatest but will do. I used bungees to tie it to the side of my backpack.

I’m using a SOTABeams tactical mini mast to support it. It’s 6m telescopic fibreglass pole that has more strength than my usual Carbon-6 mast. There are two conduit wall mounts attached to the boom, so the yagi can be mounted vertically or horizontally. It works well enough, although if I want to change polarisation I have to take the mast down and then put it up again. I could take out all the other sections I don’t need but if I’m only taking one mast on an activation I want the 6m in case I need to setup HF.

I 3D printed some guying rings and rope tensioners from this design and cut some cord to length for the mast. The 2nd lowest ring fitted perfectly on the bottom segment of the tactical mini.

First test was in the garden, listening to the 2m lunchtime net…so it received well enough.

The first outing was to Cairn William, where I’d set it up on the top. We’d arranged SSB activity on another summit, although that guy had to pull out, however, we’d also prepared the locals to listen out. I started with SSB and managed to make four contacts locally with it. I then flipped it to FM and made a few more. Including a nice summit to summit with Schiehallion, around 112 km away! I brought it out later in the day on Tillymorgan, and managed a contact with Helmsdale, around 100 km to the north…whilst the yagi was pointing south! Turning it around turned me from a 53 and a 59 by the chaser

I’m pleased with the results and think it worked rather well! It wasn’t too tricky to setup and use in the field, nor heavy to carry. It takes a bit of getting used to the length of it, especially when walking through forests as I kept catching it on trees and causing them to dump all their water onto my back!

I think a different way to connect the coax and the driven element would improve it, and maybe a dedicated mast that was just the right length would be better.

I did find this design for a 100g yagi that looks nice, and have saved a few links to 2m moxon’s. Not sure when or if I’ll make these, as I do like the convenience of the slim G. I also printed a clip for it, so it doesn’t flap around in the breeze.

After hearing that Alan, MM0VPM, was doing a tour of the Cairngorms, the local SOTA group was listening out for him. I commented that no one had done Beinn Bhrotain for a long time, not even Fraser. His response was, “How about Sunday, then?” The offer included transportation and a loan of a mountain bike, plus, of course, the guided tour—an offer too good to refuse! Free time on the weekends can be tricky, with several sets of kids’ activities and potential birthday parties, so we needed to start early so I could be back in time for my wife to start her coaching session at the swim club. Fraser was good with that, and our rendezvous was at 6 a.m. in the Dinnet car park for the onward journey to the Linn of Dee.

We’d all seen a photo recently shared of the midge in the area, which is quite unusual away from the west of Scotland. Sure enough, there were plenty about when we arrived and unpacked the bikes. We met a DoE group packing up their tents at White Bridge, and they told tales of woe and suffering in the evening; the leader seemed very pleased to be going home. My wife later told me about one of her swimmers sending home a photo of a pan of custard he was cooking on his expedition, which had a nice layer of midges on top. 🤢

The weather was pleasant enough, although the promised clear skies had yet to appear, and the cloud level was fairly low. We continued on our ride, following the Dee along a rockier track with plenty of culverts to negotiate. After around 7.5 km of cycling, we left the bikes by the side of the fence and took the track up towards the first summit we could just about see, Carn Cloich-mhuilinn. The path came and went, or we found and lost it several times, but with the rocky peak to aim for, it wasn’t too difficult to navigate. Every so often, Fraser would point out surrounding summits or features, complete with name, SOTA points, and YouTube URL, the names of which I’d immediately forget until he told them to me again on the way back down. The last 200m or so climb of this Carn was bouldery but nice underfoot, a bit like clambering across rocks at a beach. With the interim summit climbed, we admired the view. The cloud was still low, and a few patches of sun were appearing in the distance. It looked promising that it would clear for us, although I wasn’t sure if it would in time for our final ascent.

We had a good view across a small gully where the path was as obvious as could be. After a short descent down to a wee stream, the path was lost to us. A few phantom paths appeared, and we followed them, probably veering more towards the west than necessary, but we found a way. I kept my eye on SOTAGoat, to be sure I wasn’t being led astray, and we soon found ourselves both within the activation zone and the cloud. The trig appeared out of the mist, and we had made it!

Having eaten breakfast in Aberdeen at 5 a.m., it now felt like lunchtime, even though it was only around 09:15. At this point, I found out one of Fraser’s secrets to successful mountaineering — butteries. Claiming “this was all he could find in the cupboard,” he proceeded to eat what I’d estimate to be around 8,000 calories in a matter of minutes. Checking the schedule, we decided we had around 45 minutes on the summit before we should head back down.

Fraser had brought the FT-857 and his 100g yagi, and was hopeful to activate on 2m. I was on HF with the KX2 and the 18ft (5.5m) random wire vertical. We each found a suitable pile of rocks to shelter behind and set to work.

I started on 40m; the antenna needs a transformer to get a match, and even though it’s short, I’ve made contacts this way before. I thought I’d try 40m, as maybe it’s a desirable trig point or WAB etc., place that folks would want. I could hear some contest callers, but after my spot and calling with no replies, it was clearly completely dead for me, so I moved to 20m. After spotting and calling CQ, a slow trickle of replies came, and I relaxed once I crossed number 4! The replies kept coming, including four summit-to-summit stations in Germany, Switzerland, and Romania. I considered some other bands, but time was marching on, my hands were cold, and everything was getting wet. The sun suddenly shone through for a few moments, and it looked lovely. Two runners then came by, having climbed from the opposite side. They asked what I was doing, to which my usual answer is “amateur radio, speaking to other people on mountains.” They were impressed with Switzerland and asked if I could say hi from them. They soon ran off again, and given they were in running shorts and vests, I’m not surprised they didn’t want to hang around.

I could hear Fraser still calling and trying to keep his wind vane under control. I got the thumbs up that he didn’t need to get on HF, so I packed up. We had a brief celebration—this was my first 10-pointer—and then turned around and headed back down.

Once we were down out of the cloud, the view improved significantly! The cloud had started to lift, and we could see the surrounding summits and valleys—spectacular! Similar to the way up, paths came and went, but we had a clear view of the Dee and knew where to go.

Back on the bikes and back towards civilisation. We had a quick stop at the Chest of Dee waterfalls, where the pool looked lovely and inviting, before the final 5km or so to the car park. Up, activated, and back in under 6 hours.

Fraser did well on 2m, with an FM contact into the Yorkshire coast, 310 km away. Although, I think he would’ve liked some more SSB activity.

Back home, and back to reality of family life. A great trip out, and thanks to Fraser for making it happen. I’ve bought a lot of things since starting amateur radio, but didn’t think mountain bike shopping would next on my list! 🚵

OSMaps route link.

Also posted to the SOTA Reflector.

Took two of the kids with me on this one. They were keen for an adventure! Even packed their own bags with toys and random things, including ice cream and tea sets for a picnic on the summit. We parked in Donview forest car park and followed the red route up. Quite a steep bit near the start with wooden steps that the kids started counting, but then eased off and a more gentle climb after that. Nice and sheltered in the trees for much of the way. When we did get near the summit the wind was blowing an absolute gale - which everyone found amusing. We hunkered down behind a rock and the kids has their snack and picnic and I tried 2m FM. Managed three and then was worried I wouldn’t get my fourth. Heard MM0EFI calling but he couldn’t hear me, so I walked over the summit to the west side, just holding the pole with the slim G waving as the wind was blowing and then managed the QSO and even one more after that. Glad I didn’t have to get out HF as I think the kids had had enough of me messing about. Plus we had to be back in time for swim training.

The walk down was much easier, the little one started getting tired half way down but kept soldering on. We went into Kemney in search of a cafe for lunch but they were all closed except one. That one was mobbed and looked too fancy for us, so we had a picnic in the car from the Co-op!

Little one is keen to go again and packed several backpacks in the garage, so will have to see what’s next for us.

A formal looking letter arrived for me this morning, when I looked closely I could see it was from Germany. Inside were some nice QSL cards.

Micheal has two of his own from our HF SSB, HF FT8 and QO-100 QSOs over the past year, plus then the special one, DF0MF, from the lightship in Emden. Micheal describes his discovery and subsequent visit and activation of this historical ship.

I shall need to QSL, although Micheal’s two different cards makes me think about making a new QSL card for my portable SOTA operations. ⛰️

The TH-79E in the background of the photo also arrived today. The battery is dead and I have no power supply for it, and it was sold as “seen” so let’s hope a new battery will fix it!

Last weekend when playing with the new antenna, I ended up using my G90 for running FT8. However, it had been a long time since I’d used it for this and I’d forgotten what to do, even of which cable to plug in where! I also ran into a few issues, so this post is a reminder for myself of what to do.

Ever since I’ve been on HF, I had the same EFHW in the back garden as my antenna. It’s been great, lots of contacts made all over the world on SSB and digital modes. Pretty much worldwide with FT8/4 but also good DX on SSB into South Africa, Japan, Brazil amongst others. Plus of course nice chats in UK/EU predominately across 40m and 20m. If the conditions are right, then pretty much any bit of wire in the air will work! However, I’ve been looking to try something else, particularly a vertical and see how that works. I’ve spoken to Mike, M0AWS, several times about different antenna and he recommended the vertical that he uses. It’s a multiband antenna from 80-10m and, as you can see from his article, he’s made many contacts with it around the world. It seemed like something that I could put up in the garden on a temporary basis and give it a go…so with my ordered delivered and wire measured I was ready to go!

The antenna is fairly simple, and relies on a remote ATU to match the wire to the band of interest. I managed to pick up a CG-3000 from ebay recently, but there are many brands and options available, you can even use a manual tuner at the base - obviously less convenient. I’ve seen the CG-3000 go for as little as £75, although they’re typically around £150. The radiating element is a 13.4m long piece of wire, attached to the CG-3000, up the side of the mast and then around 1m of it is tucked inside the mast. On the ground connector of the CG-3000 I connected an earth rod, suitable beaten into the ground around 60cm, and then four ~12m long radials laid on the ground at 90° to each other. The CG-3000 has a SO-239 connector for coax and a 4 pin connector for the power and control cable. Mine came with 5m of control cable, so that was my limiting factor in this setup. The controller on my unit was missing the power cable, it seemed to have been cut off only leaving two tiny ends of wire. I wanted to hook it into my Anderson powerpole junction box but turned out I had no red and black cables, and the replacement connector I found had the terminals the wrong way around. So I present the most error trap prone design for powering the CG-3000. My controller is an older model and says “Tune” next to the button at the top, but really that’s reset - which is what it says on later models.

As I knew this was a temporary setup I didn’t do anything too special with the mounting, I made use of a piece of 68mm diameter drain pipe, a kids toy structure, some straps and a piece of wood with a hole drilled for the pole and some for ground pegs. DJ0IP has lots of good information on using a spiderbeam pole, including mounting options. I found the wooden base was needed to keep it from tilting over, and luckily I had a holesaw of the right size. Although with the rubber cap on the bottom, it’s a tight fit and repeated taking in and out could rub the rubber away, so I might enlarge the hole a little. With the drain pipe mounted and the pole inside it was just a case of pulling up each section and tightening them. I think for long term installation, putting hose clamps at the base of each section, just above the section below, helps stop it collapsing. There’s lots of info online about this.

I did install a ground post next to the tuner, but in retrospect, for a temporary setup, I think this wasn’t necessary…mostly as it was a pain to get back out again, which I’ll come to later. I laid the radials out on the ground, trying to get them to cover the most space. The advantage of setting up in the middle of the garden is being able to lay them out in all directions. Any permanent home I find for it will likely be along one side of the garden, so the radials will have to just go where they can.

My shack isn’t convenient for this setup, particularly with only 5m of control cable - although I suppose there’s no need for the control to be next to the radio - so I just setup in the kitchen and ran the cables out the door. This temporary setup just used a big LiFePO4 battery for radio and ATU, and that lasted the whole time. For my testing I wanted to use FT4/8, so I hooked up the G90 to my laptop. It’s been a long time since I’ve used the G90 with WSJTX, and that ended up taking me a while to sort out. I wanted to use the IC-705 as it’s so easy to use with a computer, however, this doesn’t work with the ATU. The CG3000 will automatically match the frequency when it receives rf of about 3-5W. The IC-705 has a protection system that will immediately reduce the output power to 1W when it detects a high SWR, this means it won’t trigger the tuning. I’ve seen people online use a manual tuner in between the 705 and ATU to prevent the 705 dropping the power and getting it to tune, they then bypass the manual one. Of course the AH-705 would be ideal for this situation and work effortlessly, perhaps perfect for portable/mobile setups. After some faffing things were fine. I could always put the radio into AM and hit the PTT and I could hear the relays working and watch the SWR drop.

It tuned every band from 80m to 10m, most were virtually 1.0 except 30m and 17m which were nearly 2, not sure why that was but they still worked fine and I made many contacts on 30m. I put out a test CQ on 20m to see what was what and the first pskreporter view was pleasing. I should’ve saved the pskreporter view after my first 24 hours operation but I forgot.

By the time I had it all sorted out on the first day, it was pretty late at night, so I had a look on 80m, 60m, and 40m. Lots of activity on 60m which I’ve never really been on, so that was fun, and I spent most of the evening there. The next day I tried as many bands as I could. Conditions weren’t the greatest but I still managed some nice contacts with a few new DX locations. I did notice I could hear all around the world, and many places I’d never heard before, so that was fun too. The most exciting from a DX perspective was 15m, particularly early evening, there seemed to be several openings both east and west. They’d come and go, but around long enough to make a QSO.

Highlights included California, Uruguay, Kyrgyzstan, Svalbard, Japan and Australia. I had potential to get some South Asia, pskreporter showed I was heard there, but never managed to get a QSO. These were all with 20W FT8 from the G90.

All in all, 30 countries, three or four new DX, and furthest contact was with VK3JLM, at 16,864 km. Pretty good I think!

Sunday afternoon, it was time to pack it away, and this is when I realised the ground rod might not have been such a good idea. A rod hammered over 0.5m into the ground doesn’t tend to want to come out that easily. Several places online suggested a jack to lift it out, I don’t have one of those, and someone suggested a drill and watering the ground. So that’s what I did. You have to be careful as the drill wants to turn and the rod doesn’t…but once it’s loosened off, then drilling and pulling up brings it out.

Now all that’s left is to figure out how to set it up more permanently. Ideally it needs to go away from the house, but then it needs a lot of cabling running around the garden. There’s also the fact that it’s not the most attractive thing in the garden, even I admit that, and the best place is probably in full view of the kitchen and lounge. I’ve read about people painting them grey/blue to soften their impact on the surroundings. I’ll have to think about it. Probably for now, it’ll be temporary setups, and hopefully I’ll get slicker at that so I can pop it up for the day/evening and then take it down in the morning and not get in anyone’s way. MM0OPX has a nice video on quickly setting up a spiderbeam.

In the land of Aberdeenshire, in the rolling hills and verdant fields, there lies a summit of ancient repute: the Hill of Garvock. High above the plains it stands, crowned with a tower of stone that pierces the sky like the dark spire of Barad-dûr itself. And though it is not the Eye of Sauron that watches from its heights, it is nonetheless guarded—by a herd of formidable beasts, more docile in appearance but no less territorial than the fell orcs of Mordor. These were not the servants of some dark lord, but of a farmer, who tended his cows with the same care one might afford to a legion of fearsome trolls.

Yet, it was to this very summit that our company was bound, for in the air lay a quest most urgent: the activation of the Hill of Garvock, a task that would call forth the wizard’s skill in communicating across the very ether, from the highest point in the land.

I, the wizard of our company, bore the mantle of Gandalf, though my power lay not in staff nor sword but in the ancient art of invisible communication. Deep within my pack lay a Kenwood D72, my 6m staff of carbon fiber, and the slim G that would beacon out into the surrounds. The winds would carry my signals to those far off in Aberdeen, and to those kindred spirits who also sought the heights to send their voices across the void. At my side marched four brave souls, each chosen for this journey by the fates, and not being legally allowed to be left at home alone.

There was Legolas, my eldest daughter, whose eyes were sharp and whose feet were swift. She would scout ahead, her keen senses attuned to the slightest disturbance in the fields. Princess Galadriel, my youngest daughter, whose beauty was only matched by her inability to carry anything, walked beside me, her grace a light in the darkening day. And then there were the two hobbits twins, whose hearts were as large as their stature was small, and whose constant complaining, kept the chill of the sea wind at bay.

We set forth from the edge of the Laurencekirk Viewpoint, the last outpost of civilisation before the untamed fields. The sky was overcast, and the air held the promise of rain, yet we were undeterred. Alas, we were also ill-prepared, with only half party bringing their cloaks. The path ahead led us across open land, where no tree or boulder might shield us from the vigilant eyes of the bovine sentinels.

The cows, vast in number and broad of horn, gazed upon us with suspicion as we approached their domain. Legolas, ever watchful, whispered of their movements. “They are gathering, Father,” she said, “forming a line as if to bar our passage.” I nodded, drawing my cloak about me as though it might ward off the cows’ ponderous gaze.

“Fear not, my children,” I said, raising my carbon-6 mast. “We have journeyed through lands more perilous than these (Edinburgh Airport customs border). Though the path is fraught with unseen dangers, we must press on.”

And so we did, our footsteps light but purposefully avoiding cow pats, as we crossed the meadow. The hobbits skipped merrily, laughing as they narrowly avoided an enormous pat, recently produced. Princess Galadriel’s voice, soft as a whispering brook, soothed the beasts as we passed, her words lost to the wind but not to the cows, who turned away as though under some enchantment.

At last, we reached the final field before the tower, the summit of Garvock now within our grasp. The stone structure loomed above us, a sentinel of old, marking the land for miles around. As we stepped into the activation zone, the winds howled, and the clouds parted, allowing the briefest shaft of sunlight to illuminate our path.

I raised my staff and sent out the call. The air shimmered with VHF magic, and our presence was made known across the land. The summit was activated, our voices carried far and wide, across hill and valley, to others who awaited our signal.

We awoke a wizard of exceptional experience, housed in our home town of Aberdeen, who’s voice had not been heard on 2m FM for over 20 years, but whose relentless questioning and detailed itemisation of his wizarding horde kept us within the range of the cows for longer than anyone was content with.

The quest was complete, and though the way back was still guarded by those bovine watchers, we knew the day was ours. With spirits high and laughter on our lips, we descended from the Hill of Garvock, in search of a cafe in Johnshaven and with the memory of our adventure etched forever in our hearts.

After what feels like ages since I last ventured into the garden with my Yagi antenna and HT to attempt a contact via an FM satellite, I finally succeeded.

Last time I struggled with holding all the things, trying to find the satellite and using the radio. I only managed to hear for a short period and that was it. So I decided to make a phone holder which goes on the antenna. I’ve seen several people do this on YouTube, and there are lots of designs already made online. I printed this one, and bought a phone holder from Amazon that screws in.

In practice it wasn’t quite as perfect as I thought it would be. It’s probably a few factors, not being perfectly aligned, maybe the metal in the antenna messes with the phone’s compass and perhaps other things but I had to hunt around a little for the satellite. Together with deciding at what orientation I should hold the antenna, and if it’s about time I change the frequency due to doppler, still left me feeling like I wasn’t going to have a chance.

I did simplify the radio and audio end. Last time I had a series of cables from the radio splitting the audio into the voice recorder and into ear phones. This was either directly connected to the radio or via the mini-fist mic which has the three buttons on. I thought those buttons might be useful for swithcing VFO and adjusting the memories which have the doppler corrections pre-programmed.

This time I put the voice recorder in my shirt top pocket, and held the HT and used it directly. No audio cables. This cleared out the clutter and meant I had one hand on the yagi and one on the radio.

One Sunday evening in July I decided to go out and try it. I’d seen SO-50 was coming up and had a reasonable pass of around 10-15 minutes and at a good elevation. It was coming up over the neighbour’s house and then I would see it. I found it pretty quick and heard M5JFS calling CQ. I replied but he made a QSO with someone else, however, he then ended with “I think there’s a GM5 station calling”. Here was my chance, and I made the contact!

However, in the excitement I lost the satellite and only heard the very beginning of John talking about it being my first satellite contact. I did find the satellite again and people had moved on. I didn’t manage to make another contact on that pass.

Hearing John and myself on the audio made me “see” how slick an experienced satellite operator is and how much thinking I was doing just to say what I did 😅.

The D72 is a full duplex radio, however, I didn’t hear myself on the downlink. Now perhaps I didn’t have some setting right (although I checked it several times), but when I emailed John afterwards and mentioned it, he suggested that I wasn’t hearing myself when I tx’d because the sat downlink is weakish relative to my uplink power and it was a fairly low pass. So even with filtering in the radio, there might still have been some de-sense going on sufficient to knock out my downlink.

I have since made one more contact, also on SO-50, also not doing that great at keeping the satellite in my yagi’s path. I’ve heard people talk about printing out the sat’s path, and then working out landmarks around my house and what bearing they are, to then try and follow the path without the AR phone app.

What I am thinking of doing, is building a rotator for the yagi, and having the computer control the tracking. I think it would be a fun project. I’ve started buying some of the pieces for this simple rotator by the Australian SARCnet. It’s not a permanent setup but more of a sunny afternoon in the garden arrangement.

However, at the moment, because of the sunny afternoons, and the school holidays, I haven’t had time to make it, and any free time I have had, I’ve gone out to a SOTA summit instead! So it may take another 6 months before I build it and try for a satellite QSO again. Maybe next time I’ll try a SSB one!

I’ve had my eye on this summit for a while. It’s 8 points for starters, and I’ve been doing a lot of 1 pointers recently, but it’s quite the drive to get to, so whilst it doesn’t take long to climb, the total round trip is considerable. It’s also (just) over 1,000m high but the car park is at 670m, so the actual ascent is only 420m - very similar to some lower summits. Morven, a 4 point summit, was a 650m ascent!

The weather was sunny in Aberdeen when I left, and the forecast threaten rain later in the afternoon. I did my calculations and figured I’d be back in the car before the rain came. It’s only a 45-60 minute ascent.

You start in the upper car park at Glenshee ski centre, you can park right by the start of the track. The car park is £4 which you pay for via a website, except in the valley there’s no 4G+, so you need to wait until you’re up the first slope and get signal again before you can pay. The alternative is stop in at the cafe and pay, but I’d already parked and wanted to get going.

The route is fairly straight forward in summer. The path is obvious, although it had a lot of loose gravel in many places. There are a few ups and downs along the way but nothing too bad. The steepest part is beyond the ski lift buildings on the final rise up to the main plateau. The path looks obvious from a distance but when you’re on it, it blends in with the terrain. Again, lots of loose stones here but a steady pace and I was at the top.

It’s still another 600m or so until you get to the actual summit, and I could see it being very easy to get lost in low cloud at this point, especially on the way back, it’s wide and featureless. Luckily the cloud wasn’t low, it was overcast but the view was still amazing, and on a clear day it must be spectacular.

I met another walker sitting in the cairn having his lunch. We spoke for a bit and then I looked for somewhere else to setup. A bit further away there were two smaller piles of rocks I thought I could shelter behind. The wind was persistent and I needed my hood to keep my ears warm.

I’ve taken to just activating summits with VHF if I can, not that I don’t like doing HF, I just enjoy the simplicity of using a handheld and speaking to the locals. This is particularly the case if I don’t want to be sitting around for a long time, and whilst the rain’s arrival was forecast to be later still, I didn’t really want to hang around more than necessary. I setup the slim G on the carbon-6 pole and started calling CQ.

I’d forgotten to spot, but I started on 145.500 MHz, the 2m calling frequency, and I’m used to 2m spotting not really helping. Stations started coming back to me from considerable distances, at least what I’m used to. Something I’m not used to is everyone asking to QSY to another frequency. The first caller who asked I sort of ignored his first request as I didn’t think it was necessary, but I did then move and we had a nice chat. I guess when there’s actually some activity or a big area it makes sense to move. I’ve just used to the 4-6 people on 2m when I’m on the lower summits nearer Aberdeen that it doesn’t matter if we talk for 15 minutes on the calling frequency as there’s no-one else!

My furthest was 92 miles right across the west coast to GM4OAS. I was only a 31 for him but we managed. Had GM0USI/M driving on the A90 between Perth and Dundee, and then a guy walking his dog somewhere in East Lothian carrying his boafeng with him. He just had a rubber duck on, but his signal was strong with me, his audio was a bit muffled at times though. He gave his call as M7SGX, and so I was confused where he was, thinking he was in England. However, he’d just chosen to omit the RSL. Unless I misheard him several times!¹

I didn’t get anyone back in Aberdeen but I had 8 which was plenty. I did spot myself and called some more but that was it. I heard someone else but I think it was a repeater and my VFO B happened to be on its frequency but I didn’t have it programmed in (assume it was the Dundee one). As it happens I don’t think any of the repeaters in my D72 are correct, and I should add the others around Scotland.

The excitement of such far reaching FM contacts had kept me distracted from other walkers who were around and the cold wind. I looked up to see a few other people walking around, but no-one came to talk to me. I finished my lunch, debated about HF for a moment, but then decided I’d rather be getting home and packed up.

The walk down was trickier due to the scree patches and at one point I started marching off in the wrong direction as the path split. I could see the car park so I quickly realised the path wasn’t taking me down to it.

Next time I think a yagi and a radio with 2m SSB!

It’s the summer holidays and so the kids are home all the time, or we’re away etc. and I didn’t think I would get to do very much SOTA during the holidays. However, today the younger ones were off on a play date with some friends, so that just left my eldest and I at home. Left to her own devices she would spend all her time on devices! So I figured we should go climb a hill!

My usual research method of browsing the sotlas map and asking the WhatsApp group led to Craiglich with the prospect of a tea room afterwards. The tea room was the real winner here. 🍰

There’s a small car park on the north side of the road and after climbing a rickerty gate, we were off!

The path starts along through a field and then enters the forest. It’s a little wet and boggy at first, but nothing major. The pathway is quite narrow with heather and pines growing close by. I was wearing shorts and was beginning to regret that idea on the grounds of tick risk! Although I managed the whole walk without any incident.

There’s only one real turn that you have to look for in the forest, where you bear to the left to climb the hill. At this point it’s a little steeper but overall the path is gentle and very pleasant. You come out of the forest into the open area with nice purple heather covering the hillside. I’d recently bought Sotagoat app, so my daugther was using it to track the summit. It’s a convenient app for finding the summit and telling you when you’re in the activation area. It offers an offline database too, so you can find information without phone reception, and finally spotting is easy from it. Probably does more but I’ve not looked into it too much yet.

We reached the top and I setup my slim G on the mast on the cairn, with the D72 and called CQ on 2m FM. I spoke to the locals, including Chris, MM7RVC, who’d literally just completed his intermediate exam and had passed. So we all congratulated him on that! I also spoke with Bruce, MM6BWS, who was a new local contact for me.

I did hear another station on a summit, and heard him having a QSO with MM7MOX (Andy), although I couldn’t hear Andy. Looking at MM7MOX’s activations and logs, he was on Torlum (GM/SS-227) at the time I think it must’ve been Lee, MM7LEF/P, on Scald Law (GM/SS-125) that I could hear. He was working 2m FM at exactly the time I could hear him as it was interrupting my chat with Bruce. Pretty amazing as it’s almost 150 km away and there are big hills between us. Aircraft scatter? I don’t know, I should email him!

I got my four and this trip was not about contacts, so we packed and headed down the hill in preparation for the best part of the trip!

We were going to go to Tarland tea room but when I looked at the map I saw there was one in Lumphanan and that was on our route home, so seemed a better choice. Alas! it proved no good as they only took cash and I had none. The nearest cash machine was miles away and, being a Sunday, the local post office was shut. That was a shame as it looked a lovely little tea room. So we continued on into Banchory and found somewhere there. The Birdhouse cafe. It was fine - a bit too hipster coffee house for me but I had a cup of tea and my daugther a can of diet coke.

Our other task was to find some jam sugar after our strawberry picking, and it seems the only store in Aberdeenshire that had any was the Morrisons in Banchory - whilst it was the last shop we visited it wasn’t the first!

Maybe we’ll manage another in the holidays…and I’ll have to be better prepared on the tea shop side!

TinyGS, is a network system to retrieve LoRa satellite data using ESP devices, much like SatNOGS. Everything is managed via the GitHub repo and the Telegram channels.

Getting started and flashing the software on devices is very easy via their web installer. You then request a username and password via their Telegram bot. I’m not detailing much as their instructions are plain and the process is super easy. You do have to use Telegram but it’s okay.

They have a list of supported hardware, and whilst the V3 isn’t mentioned, people on Telegram says it works. Plus when I flashed mine, it came up in the dropdown to choose it. However, it only showed the 433 MHz version.

Telegram is fine and that, but like Discord, it’s not the easiest to find useful information. Compared to Discourses forum or Github issues etc., however, it does cost the project team nothing so I don’t begrudge them that. You can search posts but it takes a lot of effort to work through them and likely multiple conversations happening at the same time. Hence this post…

You can change the frequency by logging into the webadmin, which, strangely, is actually the public website and not the dashboard that runs locally on your device. You have to request a link from the TinyGS telegram bot with /weblogin and it produces a tinygs.com url for you. As it’s Telegram I’m using my phone for it, no doubt there’s a computer client too.

You then click on your station, and a new menu appears.

The top dropdown lets you change it to 868 (or 900+ depending on your region) MHz, and voila!

But don’t bother

Why? Because there are only four supported satellites and at ~900 MHz you’ll need a decent antenna to pick up the data and I’m not sure the device can manage the doppler shift well enough to get anything meaningful. Just get a 433 MHz device and enjoy the experience.

After my double activation yesterday (which I’ve yet to write up), I bumped into Fraser, MM0EFI of RadioRover YouTube fame, in Tesco. He was asking when I was going to be doing some higher point summits, as mostly I’ve been doing ones near to the house which don’t score that high. There are quite a few in my region. After browsing sotl.as some more, I was curious as to how long it took Fraser to reach Mountain Goat. This is the award you get when you reach 1,000 points.

You can see his activation list on sotl.as, and it’s clear he’s done a lot of summits and a lot of high pointers. However, the question still remained…how long did it take?

I know the SOTA database has an API, as several other sites use it and I’ve seen it mentioned in the reflector, but I hadn’t come across any documentation. Searching around I find this post which gets me started. I work out MM is associationID 03, and then querying https://api-db.sota.org.uk/admin/activator_roll?associationID=03, I can look up Fraser’s UserID.

In the past I’ve used python to query APIs, put the JSON into a pandas dataframe then calculate and plot things from there. A quick way to get going with this is in Google Colaboratory. It’s a free jupyter notebook in which many python packages are already installed and it’s quick to jump in and get going. Unsurprisingly, it now features a LLM AI assistant, where you can just type in what you want and it generates several options of code for you to run and see what happens.

My first prompt (including spelling mistakes but now corrected) was:

retreive JSON from api url: https://api-db.sota.org.uk/admin/activator_log_by_id?year=all&id and create a plot of “Total”

Option #2 of Gemini spat out some commented code, I tweaked the date column name, as it just guessed it was called Date not ActivatorDate, and tah-dah ✨

import requests
import json
import pandas as pd
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

url = "https://api-db.sota.org.uk/admin/activator_log_by_id?year=all&id="

# Define the ID you want to retrieve data for
activator_id = "46844"

# Construct the full URL
full_url = url + activator_id

# Send the GET request
response = requests.get(full_url)

# Parse the JSON response
data = json.loads(response.text)

# Create a Pandas DataFrame
df = pd.DataFrame(data)

# Convert the "ActivationDate" column to datetime
df["ActivationDate"] = pd.to_datetime(df["ActivationDate"])

# Plot the cumulative sum of "Total"
df.plot(x="ActivationDate", y="Total", kind="line", figsize=(10, 6))
plt.title("Cumulative Sum of Total for Activator ID: {}".format(activator_id))
plt.xlabel("Date")
plt.ylabel("Total")
plt.show()

Certainly the trend of a mountain goat! Although I’d say once he reached 1,000 the pressure was off and you can see that gradient relax.

But how long did it take?

The actual question that was asked

So I asked Gemini some more questions and we find the answers:

# prompt: duration in activationdate between start and when total=1000

# Find the first row where Total is greater than or equal to 1000
first_1000_row = df.loc[df["Total"] >= 1000].iloc[0]

# Calculate the duration between the first activation date and the date when Total reached 1000
duration = first_1000_row["ActivationDate"] - df["ActivationDate"].iloc[0]

# Print the duration
print("Duration until Total reached 1000:", duration)

Plus question #2:

# prompt: what row of df has total = 1000

# Find the index of the first row where Total is greater than or equal to 1000
first_1000_row_index = df.loc[df["Total"] >= 1000].index[0]

# Print the index
print("Row index with Total equal to 1000:", first_1000_row_index)

🥁633 days and 172 activations 🎉

I’m at 16 points right now 😅⛰️🐐

Another hill, this time to the south of Aberdeen. The weather was wet and windy in the morning, particularly so inland, so thought I’d stick to the coast. The two options were Strathfinella or Hill of Garvock. Reports of angry cows from Garvock, plus the sheltered nature of the wooded summit of Strathfinella made the decision for me.

Consulting Fraser, MM0EFI, the local SOTA expert, I was going to climb it from the south, following forestry roads and mountain bike paths. Looked to be fairly short route and a quick claim to the top. It’s only a one pointer, so never going to be that far.

The weather was pretty good, breezy but some sun and mild. The route was straightforward- literally. There were a few bikers around who I met just before the turn off to the summit.

I had a chat with some of the mountain bikers but just said I was out for a walk. Too much effort to get into the real reason! They pointed me towards the trig point which was off to the side of the main path. I almost missed it whilst walking along! It’s right in the trees, and reminded me of the portal stones from the Realm of the Enderlings book series!

I set up 2m first and got a guy down in Brechin, unfortunately he was the only 2m QSO. I spent a long time calling and then decided to move to HF.

The summit is a bit of a black spot for mobile reception and I wasn’t prepared for that. I use my phone for 2m spotting and for SOTA spotting or looking up other activators. I’ve signed up and registered for APRS to SOTA, and SOTAMAT, a FT8 spotter, and maybe even a SMS one, but do I know how to use them?!

I eventually managed to spot myself on 40m and got a few contacts. 20m spot did work but no one ever came back to me…even though I’d had a few contacts with other callers.

I managed two S2S contacts in Germany. One was an exchange of 11-31 each way but we managed to get my callsign and SOTA reference communicated.

On the way down I thought about doing Hill of Garvock but I hadn’t packed lunch and still had to get back home. Maybe a double activation next time!

A lovely sunny day, and time for another activation. Hopefully better than the last – certainly the weather was better.

Quite a close summit to home, Brimmond Hill overlooks Aberdeen and the airport to the east and then Aberdeenshire to the west. There’s a walk up and over it which is popular with dog walkers, and so I met more people than I usually do on this summit. The hill also features several commercial towers which make a bit of noise on 2m. Usually a pip every so often and then a huge blast of rf that completely wipes anything out, interestingly around the 2m and 70cm calling frequencies but not so bad away from them.

I tried 2m first, with the Slim G on the pole and made a couple of contacts locally. There’s a bench that looks out over Aberdeen that I was going to setup on, but the aforementioned dog walkers came by and sat on the bench, so I decided to move off and find a spot in the heather. MM7RVC recorded me calling at his house somewhere to the west, showing off his pole and slim G – so we got a SG2SG QSO.

For HF I went with the EFHW for 40m, with the 49:1 (keep meaning to write up making that but not got round to it yet! Nothing special mind), setup on the 6m carbon pole. Generally running north-south. The weather was lovely, there was a breeze but it wasn’t too cold, and so for most of the time I tried chasing other summit activators. This worked well, as I ended up with five summit-to-summit (S2S) QSOs across England, German, Austria and Poland. I then put out spots for myself and got a few more contacts.

I think the battery was low in the radio as it was only outputting 5W, not that 10W would’ve made a huge difference, but I still find it impressive what 5W can do.

It was time to pack up, and I thought I’d see if I could catch anyone else on VHF/UHF. There’s a local lunchtime net, although I can never remember if its 12:30, 1 or 1:30pm that it starts. I got my Slim G back out and on the mast and this time I did sit on the bench. The net was going on and after a long over I managed to break in and say hello. We also did a quick QSO on 70cm. I’m not sure if the Slim G is suitable for 70cm. It worked but at what SWR? I should measure it and see. Another couple with their dog came up and wanted to come to the view point but one look of me and they decided to keep going! At this point my HT ran out of battery too!

If I was YouTubing myself, everyone would think it normal! I ended up overtaking the couple walking back to the car. I said “Hi” but no QSL on that contact.

It’s always slightly confusing getting a letter with your own handwriting on it, but that means it’s bureau delivery time!

Interesting to get a SWL (shortwave listener) card confirming they heard me make a contact with someone else. It was a QSL with PB37EUDXF, which I remember having a hard time copying as I wasn’t expecting their callsign to be so long!

I laughed out loud at this guy’s card:

Amateur radio is about the experimentation and education of radio, and politics and world affairs aren’t part of the hobby. I’m sure he doesn’t want the war as much as any other regular person.